Proclamation 5860—National Outpatient Ambulatory Surgery Week, 1988

National Outpatient Ambulatory Surgery Week, 1988, reminds us that more and more surgeries are being done on an outpatient basis in either hospital outpatient departments or separate ambulatory surgery centers. Almost 87 percent of hospitals offered ambulatory surgery in 1986, compared with 65 percent in 1980. Advances in medical technology and care are among the factors causing the American people and health care professionals alike to consider outpatient surgery as often less expensive, more convenient, and less time-consuming than inpatient surgery with hospital stays.

Outpatient surgery is also found to reduce hospital costs and to provide good health care—and professionals believe that its combination of superior health care and little disruption to patients' daily lives does speed recovery. As America's scientific and medical research efforts continue to foster improvements in medical techniques and equipment, the public can surely benefit from further awareness of outpatient surgery. That is the purpose National Outpatient Ambulatory Surgery Week seeks to fulfill, and the reason all of us should heed its message.

The Congress, by House Joint Resolution 583, has designated the week beginning September 11, 1988, as "National Outpatient Ambulatory Surgery Week" and authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of this occasion.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week beginning September 11, 1988, as National Outpatient Ambulatory Surgery Week. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this week with appropriate ceremonies and activities.

In Witness Whereof I have hereunto set my hand this thirteenth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirteenth.

RONALD REAGAN